Dodge Challenger Hellcat Redeye Test Drive Video: The Biggest and Baddest
The Dodge Challenger doesn’t compete with the Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustang. The pony car proletariat may protest, but hear me out. As the Camaro gets lighter and sharper with track-focused 1LE versions and Ford develops high-revving flat-plane V-8s and carbon-fiber–wheeled GT500s, those cars are chasing a different audience than a car like the Challenger.
Dodge’s take on the modern muscle car is bigger, heavier, more comfortable, and more audacious than those cars—the Challenger is its own thing. And the Challenger Hellcat Redeye Widebody is the most Challenger-ish Challenger Dodge will challenge you to buy.
I remember (figuratively) soiling my pants when Dodge announced the original Challenger Hellcat with “just” 707 angry supercharged horses. Apparently, five years down the line, Dodge decided the ancient Challenger platform needed even more.
The Redeye treatment grants the Challenger an ever-so-slightly detuned version of the engine in the drag-race special Dodge Demon. It makes a truly absurd 797 hp and 707 lb-ft of torque in the Redeye, which also gains some of the Demon’s trick drag racing technology. But it’s the Widebody permutation that crowns this specific Challenger as Dodge’s performance patriarch.
Huge swollen fenders are the most obvious visual tell but the changes don’t stop there. Wider tires, bigger front brakes, stiffer anti-roll bars, and a competition-tuned adaptive suspension round out the changes and transmogrify the aging muscle car into the best possible version of itself.
Just watch Jethro giggle as he drives the thing.
Check out the video above to watch our own Jethro Bovingdon behind the wheel of a 2019 Dodge Challenger Hellcat Redeye Widebody on the mountain roads of Southern California!
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